What to do if a RTMP show goes down?

Sometimes, not everything goes according to plan. It's crucial to prepare for such situations ahead of time and try to simulate these experiences before actual production shows in order to react properly if they occur.

There are two most common reasons why an RTMP show goes down:

1. Internet connection drops for the one broadcasting the show
2. Accidentally clicking “Stop Streaming” on Streaming application

If the above happens, show will be in “Ended” state and you will have to reactivate the show before you can start broadcasting to it again!

You should Reactivate the show by going to the show’s page on Bambuser dashboard, click on three dots and select “Reactivate” button

If your connection drops, your streaming application may attempt to automatically reconnect. However, if the show hasn’t been reactivated on the Bambuser dashboard, these reconnection attempts will be unsuccessful. Bambuser uses a rate limit to protect against excessive reconnect attempts and potential attacks on the video platform.

If your streaming application tries and fails to reconnect too many times, you'll be temporarily blocked from streaming to that stream key.

Now lets talk about how to minimize the risk of hitting the rate limit in the first place and then what to do if that does happen.

How to minimize the risk of hitting the rate limit:

First, we strongly recommend disabling the setting that automatically attempts to reconnect.

(example of where to disable this in OBS)

When show goes down:

1. DO NOT start streaming immediately.
2. Navigate to the `Bambuser dashboard` → `Show page` → `Three dots on the top right corner (…)` → `Reactivate`. The show should now be in the "Upcoming" state.
3. Start streaming from your streaming application.
4. The show should now switch to "live" with an expected latency of approximately 10 seconds.

We hit the rate limit, how should we react?

Show goes down and you get rate-limit error:

1. Navigate to the `Bambuser dashboard` → `Show page` → Click on the `Three dots on the top right corner (…)` → Select `Reactivate`. The show should now be in the "Upcoming" state.
2. At this point, if you try to stream, you will encounter an error. Stop Streaming.
3. Navigate to the `Bambuser Dashboard` → `Show Page`.
Change the show title to something like "*We are having some technical issues, we will be right back"*. Set the show time to 10 minutes from when you encountered the error. Doing this will inform your viewers that the show will resume in 10 minutes.
4. After 10 minutes have passed, start streaming from your streaming software.
5. The show should now switch to "live" with an expected latency of approximately 10 seconds.
6. Rename the show to the original title

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What to do if a RTMP show goes down?

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